[Rally against Media Bias, Prosecutors & Government was held in Osaka]

On 12 Feb 2011, the demonstration to protest against media bias, prosecutors & the current government was held in Osaka, the second largest city in Japan.

“Resign Kan cabinet!” (Naoto Kan is the current prime minister of Japan.)
“Kan cabinet is enemy of the people!”
“Mass media is enemy of the people!”
“Don’t be deceived by mass media!”
“Prosecutors are playing tricks!”
“Ozawa! Ozawa! Ozawa!”

Chanting the slogans, people marched the Midosuji, the main street of Osaka city. “Ozawa”-call occurred spontaneously among the people even though it was not included in the slogans that had been prepared by the organizer. Ichiro Ozawa is an influential lawmaker of DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) who tries to change the old system in order to recover the life of the common people that had been worsened by neo-liberal regime of LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) rule.

People who participated in the rally believe that the established interest group who resist to his reform had laid a false charge against Ozawa and terminate his political career.

(Regarding the Ozawa’s case, please refer to the articles listed at the end of this article.)

They found that Japanese mass media has thrown away the journalism and become the propaganda machine in favour of the class that had become the established interest group under the pro-US neo-liberalism regime. More and more the media bash Ozawa, more and more people realize the matter. Public distrust in mass media reached the critical level. Sadao Hirano, former upper house lawmaker and Ozawa’s aide describes this as “media fascism” and warns that democracy in Japan is in danger.

At first, people started voicing out on blogs and discussion board on internet. As freelance journalists who reports mainly on internet covered the case, more people started realizing how serious the situation of democracy in Japan is. People started boycotting newspapers and collecting information on internet.

On October 2010 people started organizing demonstrations against prosecutors and media bias by calling for on twitter, blogs and discussion board. This movement spread quickly to whole Japan. Starting from Tokyo, the rallies were held in Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Niigata, Iruma (Saitama) and Nishinomiya (Hyogo). In Kamakura (Kanagawa) and in Kochi, people are planning to organize rallies as well. Mainstream news media has never reported about these demonstrations against media so far.

[Another Rally will be held in Tokyo on 20 Feb 2011]

On 20 Feb 2011, a large scale rally will be held in Tokyo. Information is as follows;

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<Follow Egypt! Movement to Protest against Unreasonable Abuse of Power>

I believe that the readers of this article are mainly those who are interested in Japanese politics and might check the information on English version of Japan’s mainstream news sites. Unfortunately I have to tell you that you should suspect that the facts might be distorted and biased by them in the articles you read, especially about the politics.

Under the globalism, it is becoming quite common for “the media to fall into the hands of the rich” world-widely as Mr. Stéphane Hessel pointed out in his million seller book “Time for Outrage!” (the original title is “Indignez-Vous”). As Italian prime minister is controlling the 70% of the media in Italy, as American people just support John Stewart and neglect mainstream media, it is becoming harder for the people to find trustworthy information source even in the developed countries.

If possible I’d like to write about the political situation in Japan and how mass media lost the journalism in near future on this blog.